Margaret Cho tickles Malaysia’s funny bone at first KL show

“Let me twerk for your new government,” Margaret Cho said the moment she got on stage. For the past week, Malaysia has been swept with elation over the recent election, so naturally local politics made its way into the comedian’s show.

Her topics of sexual abuse, suicide and drugs aren’t exactly daily conversation materials for most Malaysians, but the comedian still held a captive audience who couldn’t stop laughing from the moment she showed up and started twerking.

“Can you see me twerk?” She asked. “Maybe not. My butt’s flat. You’re Asians, you get it. We Asians have flat butts, from too much sitting down and studying.”

Margaret Cho trying to twerk for Malaysia’s new government.

Being Korean-American, Margaret has plenty to say about being Asian, especially being from one as “savage” (her word, not ours) as Koreans.

“When I was 14, I told my mom I wanted to be a comedian, she said “You should just die”,” was one of her examples of how savage her own race can be.

Using comedy to soften the blow of her heavyweight topics, the comedian revealed how she tried committing suicide by hanging before, but as the shower rod started bending from her weight, she thought, “Oh no, I’m too fat to die. I’m gonna need to reach my ideal weight first before trying this again.”

Another heavy topic she dished out that evening was rape, or more specifically being a rape survivor as she was sexually abused for years from a young age by her own uncle. “People are not comfortable when I talk about this,” she admitted. “But I want to because I want other rape survivors out there to know that it is okay, we are strong, we are survivors.”

One of the people who are uncomfortable with the topic is understandably her mother, who would tell her to stop talking about it, as her mother puts it: “He already raped your aunty, you’re not special.” Savage.